


let me down slowly

by nolongervoid



Category: BoBoiBoy (Cartoon)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Cliffhanger, Instrospection, Other, but hey at least i know i can angst now, but ig it could work as is, its just very depressing tbh, its not happy, just with a, uh idk what to tag so ig go in prepared for anything??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:27:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27164531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nolongervoid/pseuds/nolongervoid
Summary: ramenzo angst
Relationships: Kaizo/Ramenman (BoBoiBoy)
Kudos: 3





	let me down slowly

Kaizo sits frozen, glassy eyes boring holes into the table in front of him. His knuckles are white from gripping his teacup, trembling slightly as he mindlessly strokes the handle over and over again till he’s probably worn an indent into the china. Ramen reaches over and rests his hand over Kaizo’s shaking one on the side of the teacup, giving it a gentle squeeze. Kaizo doesn’t even register the touch, he’s so motionless you could replace his presence with a life-size cut-out of himself and barely notice a difference. It’s his fourth cup of tea, and he hasn’t relaxed a bit.

Ramen has known Kaizo for a decade and a half. Whether either of them liked it or not, they’ve been through thick and thin together and that kind of bond doesn’t just go skin-deep. Ramen has seen Kaizo at his worst, and it wasn’t far off from what he looks like right now.

He briefly remembers the edge of a cliff, screaming and dragging and fire in the dark. Kaizo’s eyes were bright with a fervor that turned Ramen’s blood to ice. He silently prays he never goes through that again.

Kaizo never talked much, but when he did pass those throwaway lines, it was never by accident. Ramen wasn’t an idiot, he could add 2+2 and realize what Kaizo was really trying to say, even if he didn’t understand the depth to his own words. Since the first time he saw those dark spikes, the sullen scowl, those distrustful eyes, Ramen was drawn to the mysterious new boy at TEMPUR-A. Something about him made Ramen want to know more; for better or for worse, Ramen would ultimately come to know more than he’d ever wanted to.

In another life, Kaizo would have dreams to become a great and noble warrior. In this dimension, he was fueled by fear and preservation, to honor his parents’ legacy and protect the last things he had left. One gave him a reason, the other gave him a will. Take away one and he had failed destiny, take away the other and destiny had failed him.

Destiny never was kind to Kaizo.

“He’ll wake up…” Ramen tries to reassure him, but he barely believes his own words. Fang is lying on a hospital bed in critical condition, and Kaizo is so painfully used to heartbreak that his brother’s fate may as well be set in stone. The medics have little hope to offer, either, and it’s all Ramen can do but pray that fate proves them all wrong.

“Mmh.”

Ramen can practically see Kaizo mentally digging his own grave. Anything he says now is effectively a waste of breath, but he’s desperate.

“It’s not your fault.”

“I know.”

Of course he does. He knows it’s not his fault that his stars have been crossed for as long as he’s lived. But that doesn’t stop him from resenting them with a bitterness that even surprises Ramen at times.

Kaizo brings the cup to his lips and takes a silent sip in one smooth movement, gently nudging Ramen’s hand aside, then replaces it on the table and goes back to playing mannequin. Ramen takes his hand back and folds them together, resting them on the tabletop.

“When was the last time you slept?”

Again, Kaizo refuses to register he’s been spoken to, so Ramen gets up and wraps his arms around him. Ever so slightly, Kaizo relaxes into the embrace, just barely that Ramen wonders if he imagined it. Kaizo doesn’t push him away until the teacup is empty, and he refuses to let go.

“You’re going to be okay,” Ramen murmurs, resting his head on a stiff shoulder. Kaizo makes a small twisted sound of disagreement, but Ramen isn’t sure if he was trying to convince the other or himself.

-

They had to practically drag Kaizo out of the infirmary so he could go try and get some sleep or else he’d be spending day and night at Fang’s bedside. It doesn’t matter where they put him, though, he’s the same laconic frozen figure he was hunched over in the hard plastic visitors’ chair. He’ll fall asleep for a few hours, or maybe he just lays there with his eyes closed, dreaming of sleep to relieve him from the misery of existence for a little while.

Ramen watches him go through the motions, feeling hopelessly unhelpful because he can’t do anything about it. As much as he’s tried to get him to open up for the last fifteen years, Kaizo is impossibly closed off. His circle of concern includes Fang, Enerbot, and Maskmana’s orders. Everything else is a temporary affair. Every time Ramen thought - or hoped - he had made it through, Kaizo puts up another wall. It’s the way they were trained, it’s literally how his power works, and yet Ramen still dreams that after all this time maybe, just maybe, there’s something more between them.

Kaizo doesn’t object to his company, though. In the days that follow the incident that landed his brother in life-threatening condition, turning to weeks, Kaizo is fading. Every so often there’s a spark of life, but Ramen knows that it’s only the prospect of revenge, not hope, that gives a shred of warmth to his frozen heart.

They keep up awkwardly superficial conversation. Sometimes Kaizo talks, sometimes he stays silent with his lips pressed into a thin line. Ramen keeps filling the silence anyway, feigning enthusiasm for topics he can’t bring himself to care about in the given situation. Despite Kaizo’s stubborn distance, Ramen keeps trying.

One day he finds him in Fang’s room, gazing at a pair of glasses that would only fit a child. Ramen tries to remember if he can recognize it from a time in the past, but for the life of him he can’t recall it. He never paid all that much attention to Fang, either. The young boy would often slip through the cracks of busy adults in their military world, but never once did he manage to evade Kaizo’s watch. Ramen didn’t know much about him personally; just that he meant everything, the world and life itself to Kaizo.

Ramen ignores Kaizo’s protests as he wraps him in a close hug, forcing his shaking body to relax into his own, and before he knows it, Kaizo is breaking down in his arms.

Kaizo has only ever been this raw and vulnerable in front of Ramen before, and there’s a sickening reminiscence as Ramen remembers the events that led up to the moment itself. He unconsciously tightens his embrace at the memory, hoping that history won’t repeat itself. He only has himself to blame if it does.

Kaizo ends up falling asleep in his arms, exhausted from contemplating and hurting and grieving. Ramen holds him till his limbs are sore and then numb, then presses the ghost of a kiss on his tear-streaked cheeks. For the first time in over a month, Kaizo’s breathing deepens with real, relaxed sleep.

-

Fang doesn’t wake up.

Kaizo’s arms drop to his sides and he swiftly leaves the room. Ramen immediately jumps up and follows him out, leaving Boboiboy and his friends to weep into each others’ arms while their superiors try and salvage the situation. Kaizo doesn’t cry, he stops in his tracks when he senses Ramen behind him.

“Where are you going?” Ramen asks.

There’s a pause.

“That doesn’t concern you.”

Ramen crosses his arms. “Your brother just died and you think I’m going to leave you alone?”

“I need some time to myself,” Kaizo says.

“In the weapons storage room?”

Another pause. 

Kaizo turns around to look at him. “What do you want?”

There’s a lot of things that Ramen wants, but he silences those ideas and gauges which is wisest to voice right now. “I think you’re the one who needs to answer that question.”

“I don’t want anything. I have nothing to want anymore.” His voice is flat and lifeless.

“Not revenge?”

Kaizo closes his mouth, confirming Ramen’s assumptions. It’s a few moments before he speaks again.

“Going after them is suicide, you know that? Your brother barely got out of there alive, now you want to go back?”

A choked sound escapes Kaizo’s mouth at the mention of Fang, but otherwise he appears unaffected. Ramen’s heart sinks to his stomach and he fights the urge to throw up.

“I don’t want anything. I have nothing to want anymore,” Kaizo repeats.

“So it doesn’t make any difference to you whether I stop you here right now and drag you back to your room?” Ramen raises an eyebrow.

A frown crosses Kaizo’s face for a moment, then disappears. He shrugs.

Well, compliance is better than stubborn refusal.

“I’ll make some tea,” Ramen decides, and heads off towards the kitchen.

Kaizo shuffles after him and sits down uncertainly on a chair by the counter. There’s a lone red carrot donut sitting there, and Kaizo stares at it for a while, even after Ramen places a steaming cup of matcha in front of him.

“He found these on Earth,” Kaizo says randomly. “He gave me one and told me it was the best thing he’d ever eaten.”

Kaizo picks it up and turns it over in his hand a couple times, then stops.

“And now he’s gone.”

Ramen nods, unsure of what to say. The past few weeks Kaizo has been silent with acceptance, but the actual confirmation still shook him.

Kaizo shakes his head, then, as if he’s jerking out of some lalaland back to the present, and shrugs. “Well, guess if no one else is going to eat it I may as well.”

Ramen isn’t entirely sure how to respond to that, so he doesn’t. Instead he leans against a cabinet and watches him eat the donut and then drink the (now cold) tea without comment. He disposes of the wrapper and rinses the teacup and they head back to the others.

-

Ramen wasn’t expecting Lahap to be there with the others but he supposes it would make sense; after all, Lahap was with them when it was just the two of them. Kaizo stops when he sees him, but the purple alien doesn’t take a moment’s hesitation to grab him in a fierce hug. He pulls away and pats his back, nodding at Ramen to acknowledge his presence before guiding him to Kaizo’s own room.

He doesn’t like invading others’ privacy, least of all Kaizo’s when it’s taken him this long to build up some level of trust between them, but he can’t help pausing in front of their door while passing by later. Kaizo would confide in Lahap, understandably, but the words “my fault” float through the door and Ramen is too curious to pass up the opportunity.

“I was too hard on him but he knew he was weak. He knew he couldn’t do it and I wasn’t there to protect him…”

“He was older now,” Lahap was saying, “you couldn’t have controlled him forever. He fought for his own independence and you were right to let him go.”

“And then he went and got himself killed.” Kaizo’s voice is empty. “Remind me how I was in the right.”

Lahap doesn’t seem to have a response to that, not for a few moments anyway.

“You’ve spent so much of your life worrying about  _ him, _ he hated that, you never found room to care for yourself, and now both of you suffered as a result.”

“Of course I worried about him, he was a child!”

“So were you,” Lahap reminds.

Ramen’s conscience implores him to leave, then, but he’s heard all he had to. He always knew it, anyway, that Kaizo put his brother first and foremost priority, above his own wellbeing most of the time. Maskmana mentioned it as a result of being forced into a position of guardianship too early. Ramen thinks back to that first day of training with one of their instructors.

_ “What brings each of you bold young faces here?” the admiral asked them. _

_ “I want to fight the evil aliens!” one of them said. “I’ll get rid of them all!” _

_ “I want to be the greatest hero in the whole galaxy!” _

_ Kaizo was the last to speak up. “I want to protect the people I care about most.” _

_ “That’s very noble,” the admiral nodded. “Alright, onto the training course!” _

Ramen had initially assumed Kaizo meant his planet or the galaxy, but it soon became obvious there was only one person Kaizo really cared about and that was Fang. So much so that when he finally achieved the rank of Captain, he promptly left the organization to train his own brother to become a fighter. Ramen had been disappointed to see him disappear so quickly, but not entirely surprised. Kaizo never made attempts to form any lasting bond with anyone at TEMPUR-A. Ramen was just an exception who happened to be in the right place at the right time enough times to leave a lasting impression on him. Which made it satisfying enough to run into him again at Sunnova Station. Kaizo may despise it but there’s definitely something there between them.

But then he’s back at square one. It doesn’t make a difference if there’s something between him and Kaizo because Kaizo never even stopped to think about himself. It was always Fang. After all the missions, the glory and the fame and the fans, the friends he made along the way, all of it came down to protecting the people he cared for the most. The person. His brother.

Ramen knows Fang was the last thing Kaizo has from his old life, but he needs to learn to move on. He can only move on or give up, and Ramen has a sickening suspicion that Kaizo is already inclined toward the latter.

-

Ramen catches Kaizo heading towards the weapons room again the next afternoon. This time Kaizo is less relenting, and doesn’t bother to hide his intentions.

“It’s my fault that idiot tried to fight and failed. The least I can do is finish his battle.”

“Maybe when we have a plan and an army and confidence that you’re in a stable state of mind,” Ramen offers.

Kaizo sulks as Ramen drags him back to the main room, where Lahap is conversing with Boboiboy and his friends. They’re making plans to go back to Earth, take some time to recover and spend time with their own families. Lahap has the suggestion of sending Kaizo, too, and Koko Ci immediately gives his permission. Ramen marvels at the genius in retrospect; there’s no way Kaizo can get his hands on arsenal and a spaceship to face his brother’s murderers on Earth.

Ramen later asks if he can join them. He’s never actually been to Earth before, and they don’t object, so the next day, he boards the spaceship headed for Pulau Rintis, Malaysia.

-

Kaizo lays on the worn carpet of what was once a grand bedroom. The place is long-abandoned, a certain civil safety violation. There might have been plans to tear the house down if they could sidestep the town rumors of it being haunted. Kaizo is glad they haven’t touched it yet. The largest hole in the wall is more or less preserved, though the rest of the building threatens to collapse any day now. He stares up to the roof, daring it to fall down on him now. It creaks with the wind, but remains otherwise stable. Shame.

Shadows dance around the walls every so often, then disappear whenever Kaizo turns to look. They’ve been teasing him forever, and yet he still can’t help but imagine them there. He stares into the yard, sparse skeletons of dead shrubbery with pools of rainwater in between. There’s a flash of lightning that briefly illuminates the twisted front gates, and Kaizo tries to envision a group of children there, walking through for the first time, daring to approach this remarkably haunted house. The thrill of the supernatural drawing them in as much as it repels others. That’s how the story went, right?

It’s been years and he can hardly recall Fang’s voice, contemptuous at times, enthusiastic at others, relaying the events that concurred at this very mansion years ago. He realizes he’d never paid attention, tuning out the frivolous drama of pre-teen boys and only noting the relevant information about power watches and their uses. How he regrets that now. Maybe if he’d paid attention, Fang wouldn’t have left. 

But there’s nothing he can do about that now. Ramen won’t let him go after those bastards, and in any case, he’s Enerbot’s last heir. He swore he’d protect the sphera with his life, though such a bold vow is easier voiced than honored. All he can do is lay on the hard floor, breathing in the filthy carpet, and listening to the thundering storm rage outside, imagining his brother in the same place all those years ago. It’s oddly cathartic to subject himself to the same condition that Fang lived through once upon a time gone by.

-

Ramen has watched Earthen movies in the past, and it often fascinated him how it always seems to rain when the protagonist is feeling sad. The fact that an entire region’s atmospheric conditions could and would cater to the emotions of a single individual was mindblowing, unless, of course, the individual in question was elemental master Boboiboy himself.

Fittingly, the clouds mourn along with them today. The rain pours mercilessly, thunder and lightning embellishing the gloomy scenery. And yet, Kaizo has chosen a spot right in the face of the wind and water to wallow in spite of being technically inside. He sits next to a gaping hole in the side of a creepy old building on the outskirts of town. Ramen goes the inside route to the bedroom, and stands a little ways behind him. Kaizo doesn’t flinch as a blinding bolt of lightning touches down in front of them, followed almost immediately by a deafening clap of thunder.

Ramen speaks up. “You’re going to get sick.”

“He didn’t.”

“Who?”

“I made him live here for six months and he managed just fine.”

Of course. 

Ramen holds back his annoyance and sighs. “Well you haven’t been eating or sleeping and you’re going to get sick some way or another.”

Kaizo’s voice is so quiet a breeze could carry it away. It’s practically impossible to hear him so Ramen sits down right next to him.

“You need to take better care of yourself.”

Kaizo stares onward, silent.

“Why don’t you take better care of yourself?” Ramen tries again.

“Why do you care?” Kaizo asks flatly.

Ramen splutters. “Because...I don’t know? I care about you?”

Kaizo shrugs. “Your mistake.”

There’s a few beats of silence.

“Why did you care about him?”

The answer comes so automatically Ramen internally slaps himself for wasting his breath.

“He was my brother.”  _ “He was all I had left from the life I cared about.” _

Ramen waits a moment before opening his mouth. “What am I, then?”

Kaizo doesn’t answer. The situation is suddenly unbearably awkward and Ramen wants out until Kaizo speaks up again.

“What do you want to be?”

Ramen has the answers ready on his tongue but this isn’t the time. He ponders, then,

“A well-wisher.”

Kaizo stops. “What?”

“I want to care about you. If you’re going to stubbornly not care about yourself then I’m going to stubbornly keep caring about you until you realize it’s what you have to do.”  _ “I also want to love and be loved by you forever but I don’t think you’re ready to hear that yet.” _

Kaizo opens and closes his mouth several times, then sighs, expression turning firm again. “You’re wasting your time.”

Ramen’s heart sinks. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Kaizo is stubborn in his silence this time, and Ramen grows desperate.

“I know you better than you know yourself,” he says.

Kaizo raises his eyebrows without turning to him, and Ramen nods.

“I know you spent your life caring about your brother more than you care about yourself. And now that he’s gone you have nothing left to care about so you’ve just decided to call it quits right here.”

Kaizo doesn’t respond.

“So that’s just what you’re going to do, then. Give up on everything because you were always too narrow-minded to see past remnants of a past life. They’re gone, now, Kaizo, it’s time to grow up.”

When Kaizo ignores him, Ramen sighs and gives in, getting up and leaving him to stare out at the rain alone again.


End file.
